AROUND TOWN

Santa Monica's Farmers' Markets are known for their rich bounties of vegetables, baskets of freshly cut flowers, live music, breads, cheeses, and delicious food samplings and the markets are open rain or shine for your convenience.

In the Middle Ages, gift exchange helped people define their relationships to family and friends, to acquaintances and strangers, to God and to church. This exhibition, drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, examines models for giving found in scripture and in the lives of the saints, explores how gift giving functioned in medieval society, and highlights the special role of the medieval book as a gift. December 16 – March 15.

Over 180 ancient glass objects from the collection of Erwin Oppenländer are featured in this exhibition. The Oppenländer collection, which the Getty acquired in 2003, is remarkable for its cultural and chronological breadth. It includes works made in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Greek world, and the Roman Empire, and spans the entire period of ancient glass production, from its origins in Mesopotamia in about 2500 B.C. to Byzantine and Islamic glass of the eleventh century A.D.. This ongoing exhibit begins October 8.

Dudamel and the Phil perform a program steeped in nostalgia even as it gazes into the future: City Noir and the "New World" Symphony – indelibly American in outlook and inspiration. Come for two expressions of the American experience, including Dudamel’s fresh approach to the beloved “New World” Symphony. March 12 & 13, 2015.

Drawn entirely from the premier collection of The New-York Historical Society, "Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School" features forty-five outstanding American landscape paintings from the nineteenth-century. Among the artists represented in the exhibition are the heroes of the American landscape movement: Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Albert Bierstadt, among others. Through June 7, 2015.

The efforts of MOCA’s Acquisition & Collection, Photography, and Drawings committees, as well as those of many generous individuals and institutions, have enabled the museum to cultivate one of the premier collections of contemporary art in the United States.

Back by “Popular” demand. Variety calls WICKED "a cultural phenomenon!" Winner of over 100 international awards, including a Grammy and three Tony Awards, WICKED is “Broadway’s biggest blockbuster” (The New York Times). December 10 - March 15.